


sift through the static

by semperfemina



Series: sink. [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 09:19:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16194623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperfemina/pseuds/semperfemina
Summary: love's a losing game but for some reason, you're still playing for keeps.(they're boys in a punk rock band. it's all black eyes and blackouts and broken hearts. the pain is part of the process.)





	sift through the static

> these are the words you wish you  
>  wrote down, this is the way you  
>  wish your voice sounds - handsome and smart  
>  my tongue's the only muscle on my body  
>  that works harder than my heart  
>    
>  _okay, i believe you but my tommy gun don't_ , brand new.
> 
>   
>    
>  i don't know much but  
>  a crutch is a crutch if  
>  it's holding you from  
>  moving on  
>    
>  _everything to nothing_ , manchester orchestra.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

there's this picture.  
  
it's a polaroid picture, one of those small ones that can slip into the back of your phone case or into your wallet. novelty sized. keepsake sized.  
  
it was taken at night, outside of a club, against a half-crumbled brick wall seperating a sidewalk from a parking lot. the brick looks fire-engine red in the print, the sidewalk glows grey.  
  
in the picture, they're standing in this order: jihoon on the far left, joshua beside him, wonwoo, then mingyu, and on the right seungcheol. two of them are smiling: mingyu and joshua. it's winter, early dark, and they're all wearing heavy coats. the flash washes them out against the deep purple color, the night sky.  
  
it's not the only picture mingyu has of them, but it's his favorite. he keeps it stuck in the corner of a larger frame on his desk. sometimes he forgets it's there and it takes him by surprise and he stares at it, wishes he could remember what he had been thinking about right then, in that moment, when the shutter clicked and the light exploded and the print came out, undeveloped.  
  
it must be the last picture of them as a group, as a band, the way it was back then. he can't remember anyone taking another photo of them all together like this again.  
  
in the photo, mingyu is smiling but wonwoo isn't. he's looking at mingyu, though.  
  
in the center of the photo, their shoulders touch. their arms press together.  
  
  
  
  
  
back then -  
  
(mingyu's life is divided into two parts; _back then_ and _now_. back then was the time before his apartment, before school, before the normal shit. back then is when mingyu was still playing music, when he was still with the band, when it seemed like all they did was tour and record and tour and record and tour and record. back then is when he met wonwoo, and when he still sort of had him. the years things went on this way with the band, with wonwoo, however many months it was, they all just blend and blur together. soft at the edges. he can't say how long it was. but it's over now, so he thinks it doesn't matter.)  
  
back then, mingyu was wild. they all were because that's how they were supposed to be, it was part of it all, part of that life. so they drank all the time and they hardly ever slept and they saw more bars in more cities than anything else. they did all the requisite stupid shit and did it gladly, because that was the life; that was the dream. they did it because they could, because at the end of the day they didn't answer to anyone. they kept no home addresses, no nine-to-five, no relationships that held them down in one place.  
  
and maybe it was fun, to start out with, but for mingyu it just got to be too much. the feeling started to feel less like freedom and more like being undone, untethered. when the restlessness came, a quiet, eerie feeling settled in on top of it. a hollowness, a lack of desire; for a while, the world went grey and it was sometime during that time that mingyu decided he needed something else - he needed _out_.  
  
it was easy enough to walk away from all the vices; all of the alcohol and the attention and the little bit of money and even the drugs. he woke up one day, turned a corner, and left all the parts of his life behind and found himself unburdened, empty-handed and he hoped he was picking the right thing but it was too late to change his mind or go back so he needed to make peace with it quick. and he did.  
  
it seemed simple enough to open up his hands and let everything slip through and for the most part, mingyu did. but he didn't walk away from wonwoo. didn't find that easy at all.  
  
still hasn't, still can't.  
  
he's still trying to figure that one out.  
  
  
  
  
  
he didn't have anywhere to go when he left the band and that's how he wound up here.  
  
_here_ is the apartment he shares with jihoon, jihoon's apartment, where he came when he did the same thing that mingyu did - only jihoon did it some months earlier. (that's to say he left, quit, said he was done with the band and he was gone. it was that easy for him, too.) the apartment is on third floor, above a storefront that changes every six or so months. it's been everything at some time or another but for now, it's an electronics repair shop. it never sees much traffic from customers. more from tenants, mingyu and jihoon and the three people that live above them, the couple that lives below. it's mostly them coming and going, in an out. the apartment is close to school (mingyu goes to school now, communications, because why not) and closer to some bars, and a couple restaurants down the block.  
  
it's not a bad place to live; it's just a place. it's unassuming and average and comfortable and safe. it's mundane in it's normality but mingyu thinks that maybe that's what he asked for and what he wanted all along, and it's fine.  
  
he has a room; a bed, a television, a side table with a lamp. a desk on the far wall, under the window. from the window he can see another apartment across the street, the apartment beyond that and the one beyond that one. he has some pictures on his desk, a book case in the corner of the room. typical, standard as rooms go. it's a place to live and it's not a bad place. it just is.  
  
when he comes home at the end of the day, he feels a strange satisfaction with the ease of it, the familiarity. no surprises here - he gets to come back to a life just the way he left it, day after day after day.  
  
_it's fine_ , he tells himself.  
  
_it's what i wanted_.  
  
and just because something isn't a lie doesn't mean it's the full truth, either.  
  
and if sometimes he comes home and he lays down in bed and it feels like the room is closing in on him and it suddenly it all feels like a tomb, it's just a feeling - it'll pass, the same way everything else does. it's fine, he tells himself still. it's what he wanted, after all.  
  
  
  
  
  
there's this one time -  
  
it's _back then_ , in the life that feels like it could be worlds away to mingyu _now_.  
  
they're in someone's house, they're at someone's party, and the music is too loud and all night long, wonwoo won't talk to him.  wonwoo won't talk to him, but he won't stop staring and mingyu knows he's angry but he also knows wonwoo would never admit that. he'd never say it - so instead, here he is, here both of them are, circumnavigating the rift that's opened up between them.  
  
and if looks could kill, mingyu would be a dead man.  
  
they both drink too much (because this is back then and that's what they do) and the air they share is filled with static and sometime in the night, they wind up upstairs in this home they don't know. the music is muffled through the locked door and they're sitting there, on the stranger's bed, and neither of them knows what to say.  
  
mingyu is leaving. now they both know and wonwoo won't say it but he's so livid and mingyu knows. they're making out on a stranger's bed like fucking teenagers and something doesn't feel quite right; wonwoo pulls at mingyu's hair, digs his nails into his shoulders, bites his neck. mingyu tries to temper the hurt with something softer, some sort of kindness, tries to reach up and touch wonwoo's face but wonwoo won't let him. he pushes mingyu's hand away, bites at his fingers when mingyu tries to settle them over the swell of his bottom lip. _stop_ , mingyu says because he doesn't want things to be like this and wonwoo just teeths  at his thumb harder and suddenly the pain is sharp and he knows wonwoo wants to hurt him but that's enough. he pulls his hand back only slightly, catches wonwoo's jaw, and his voice sounds more harsh than he means for it to - _fucking stop, wonwoo_.  
  
"don't do this," mingyu says into the air between them. and then, a little plaintively, too diplomatic -  
  
"why the fuck won't you talk to me?"  
  
it feels like the wrong thing to say but then again, anything he could say right now would be the wrong thing because he's already done the worst; he's already said i'm leaving and that's why they're here, now. that's why wonwoo is so angry and mingyu knew it would be bad but he didn't know it would be like _this_. he didn't know that the floor would open up underneath both of them and they'd be slipping into something deep and dark. he wants to tell wonwoo you're not making it any easier but that would be too much, insult to injury, and he isn't sure if wonwoo is ever going to forgive him for doing what he's already done but mingyu knows he wouldn't forgive him for that.  
  
it's the wrong thing to say, but there's no right thing so it doesn't surprise him when wonwoo shoves away, nudges mingyu's arm and pushes off top of him and stands up and turns around and leaves. just like that. nothing else said, nothing else done.  
  
mingyu is there for three more weeks. wonwoo doesn't look at him again.  
  
doesn't touch him again.  
  
doesn't say goodbye when he leaves.  
  
and mingyu thinks that's the end - that it's the worst it can get.  
  
  
  
  
  
when he quits the band, he stops dying his hair.  
  
it's this dull shade of blue for the longest and then it grows out and he cuts a bit more of it off each time and there's no blue, after a few months.  
  
he gains some weight over time, a benefit of not drinking most of his meals or eating gas station food in the back of the van. one day, jihoon finally stops telling him that he looks like shit and mingyu thinks that he does look better now. maybe not happier, but better. he looks more like a person who lives in the real world.  
  
he forgets that at the height of all the bad things (the road, the shows, the fucking drinking, the constant _noise_ ), there were these horrible headaches and these nosebleeds and the doctor said it was stress. he wasn't resting enough. he needed to slow down. and when he didn't slow down, he'd fall asleep and wake up and there would be red all over, dried blood on his sweatshirt and he'd throw the hoodie away, wash his face, pretend it didn't happen.  he'd wash away the taste in the back of his throat with whatever he could find, a bottle of water shoved under the backseat of the van or a room temperature glass of cheap whiskey.  
  
he wakes up sometimes here, now, in the apartment and finds his face sticky, matted with blood.  
  
if it's over now, why can't he let some of it go?  
  
(it's been over a year since he left and he hasn't spoken to wonwoo. he tries, he's trying, to convince himself that what he feels settling over him when he thinks about wonwoo and the hole that's left in his own life isn't panic - isn't heartbreak.)  
  
if things are okay, if he's better - why is there still blood on the cuff of his sleeve?  
  
he turns on the tap - rinses the worst of it out of his shirt; looks in the mirror and tries to tell himself that it's okay. that he knows who he is and what he's doing. he repeats it until his mind rights itself, but he goes back to bed knowing he doesn't have a goddamn clue about any of it.  
  
  
  
  
  
(the first time wonwoo talks to him in over a year, he won't say much at all. he texts the name of a place, a dive bar across town, and mingyu goes without asking any questions. he watches the set they play that night and it feels like a dream and he's sick to his stomach the entire time. when it's done, mingyu watches wonwoo go out the stage door and after the crowd funnels out, mingyu goes too.  
  
there's no one else there, on the darkened and narrow side street beside the venue. just the two of them and silence like an anvil.  
  
mingyu isn't sure what to say and he isn't sure how he starts but whatever he says, whatever it is, however important or unimportant, wonwoo cuts him off.  
  
_i don't want to talk_ , wonwoo says.  
  
so they don't talk.  
  
instead, they lock the latch on the bathroom door and wonwoo drops to his knees and sucks mingyu off and after he comes, mingyu tangles his fingers in wonwoo's hair and pulls him up. wonwoo's lips are wet with spit and cum and when mingyu kisses him, it's less of an actual kiss and more a collision. it already feels like an accident, an undoing. wonwoo bites his bottom lip and mingyu's mouth fills with the taste of blood and when wonwoo leaves mingyu standing there in the bathroom, mingyu will remember seeing him that way for the longest time, until the next time he calls.  
  
he knows it then, that the worst isn't behind them at all; that it's yet to come.  
  
wonwoo leaves but before he does, he turns and smiles with his face too open, too honest, a grin like a gaping wound, his lips swollen and bruising. mingyu's blood in his mouth, slick against his teeth.)  
  
  
  
  
  
he does still go to shows sometimes.  
  
sometimes they're at dive bars and other times at venues a little bigger that still somehow feel like a dive bar, drinks served in plastic cups and the floors are always sticky. mostly it's bands that jihoon helps out here and there, friends of friends, and they're not the worst shows in the world so it's easy for mingyu to go, to stand in the back, near the av booth and make small talk with roadies and managers. he always tells himself he'll hang there, he'll wait, but one the music start he almost always finds himelf drifting up through the crowd, song by song, until it's near the middle of the set and he's standing near the front, off to the side.  
  
he's too close to the amps, the music is distorted and the words don't sound like much. he watches carefully, closely, watches like he's studying something; time passes by languidly, strange and slow. the music is so loud that for a while he forgets he has a heartbeat and instead, inside his chest, there's just the reverberation of the bass guitar. the songs ebb and flow into one another, white noise this close up, and mingyu isn't thinking about the music - he isn't thinking much of anything.  
  
he doesn't miss it - he tells himself this with certainty, solidly, the fact of the matter. he doesn't miss when that was him up there. it almost drove him crazy and he'd never ever want to go back.  
  
he stares at the bassist for a long time, longer than he should, watches this person with a sort of rapt fascination and of course, always, he thinks of wonwoo; it's funny the way he does that - sees a little bit of him everywhere, in everything, in every dark haired boy with a guitar slung around his shoulders.  
  
_i don't miss it, i don't miss it, i don't miss it._  
  
his head hurts. he can't look away from the stage until it's over, until it's done, until the music stops and everyone else leaves.  
  
_i don't miss him, i don't miss him, i don't miss him, i don't._  
  
  
  
  
  
there's a girl who lives downstairs. mingyu never really meant to know her but she has these arguments with her boyfriend and these apartments aren't insulated well - the sound travels.  
  
once or twice a week (on the bad weeks, sometimes it's once or twice a day) they'll have these fights; big, loud, ugly fights and mingyu hears every word of it when they're at their loudest. admittedly, at some point, it did stop being something he overheard and started being something he actively listened to and that's his problem but now, he's sort of invested.  
  
they have these huge arguments, usually the girlfriend accusing her boyfriend of cheating and then it'll spiral and they'll just be screaming over every little thing everyone ever did wrong and mingyu is exhausted by it but he feels bad, too, because he'll hear the door slam and then he'll hear the girlfriend crying, sometimes for hours. ever the altruist (or the opportunist, he isn't sure), he can't just ignore this. so he'll turn up downstairs, at her door, and they'll sit inside and drink coffee together in her kitchen. she'll tell mingyu that she knows her boyfriend is cheating and she just wishes he'd admit it but he won't, he's a coward.  
  
and if her sometimes-boyfriend wasn't such an asshole, maybe mingyu would feel just the tiniest bit of guilt or even reproach for fucking her. maybe he'd feel slightly less than apathetic.  
  
mingyu will kiss her, like he doesn't know where it'll lead. like he doesn't know what'll happen next.  
  
it's not bad, it's never bad - it's just sex, almost mechanical in function. she won't look him in the eyes for a while after. (instead, she looks somewhere else; she touches his eyelashes with the back of one of her fingers, says _you've got sad eyes_.) during, she looks at him like maybe she wishes he were someone else and like she wishes she were someone else, too.  
  
mingyu knows that look, he knows he wears the same one - knows that's just the way it is when you love somebody else.  
  
  
  
  
  
the hotels they sleep in now are nicer.  
  
back then (why does it feel like it was so long ago) - back then, it was hardly ever a motel they slept in at all. mostly it was with someone who knew someone or it was sleeping in the van. when it was a hotel, it was hardly one at all - scratchy sheets and ceilings dappled brown with water spots. air conditioners and heaters that never really worked. the tile in the bathroom was always cracked.  
  
these places now are different, a little better.  
  
(mingyu will say, _you're ten minutes from where i live, you could've just come over._  
  
_and miss out on all this?_ wonwoo will reply, pointing at the one robe hanging in the closet. mingyu doesn't bother to say anything else, just slips his jacket off and hangs it over the back of the stiff armchair that occupies the corner of the room.)  
  
it's not night anymore. it's early morning, close to two and they're both a little drunk. mingyu tells himself that if he hadn't been at a bar nearby, he wouldn't have come and while it's a lie, it makes him feel better. wonwoo texted (shows over at midnight, staying close by. busy?) and mingyu waited one hour and thirty-seven minutes to text back (be there at one) even though he was holding his phone in his hands when the message came through. wonwoo had come off stage tipsy and mingyu had flowed over from the club he'd spent the majority of the night at and they drank more, three or four drinks, at a bar that was along the walk to the hotel. in the elevator, they stood close, both looking at their phones and mingyu glanced over, stared at wonwoo's profile for a minute; the hair at the nape of his neck still matted with sweat, hot from the stage lights - the sharp line of his collar bone under the thin fabric of his shirt.  
  
outside the room, wonwoo sorts through his pockets trying to find the key-card for the door and mingyu leans over his shoulder, watching. _take a shower_ , mingyu says, _you reek_.  
  
they never had rooms like this when mingyu was still playing, when they were touring - it feels like a lifetime ago, a different life altogether. this room is well-lit and comfortable and the sheets are cool and the pillows are soft and mingyu lies back on the bed with his feet on the floor while the shower is running in the other room, the door open and the mirror covered in steam.  
  
time is doing that thing again - it's getting away from him, getting all mixed up, and he closes his eyes for what seems like only a moment, but when he opens them, wonwoo is next to him on the bed. his hair is wet - there's still a few droplets of water on his back. the room is quiet and dim and when he says _come here_ , wonwoo listens, leans over and lets mingyu put a hand on the back of his neck, pull him closer.  
  
mingyu knew it would end like this, he knew it when he came here, but he still finds himself taken by the routine. he finds himself confused by how natural it is, by how easy it comes to them still, after everything that happened. after he left. he finds it strange that they're this now, whatever this is; they're together here and nowhere else, they exist in some strange grey area where nothing makes much sense. they're twelve am text messages and missed calls. what are they now, besides a series of encounters? they're living these chapters but they're living them all out of order. the story, their story, it isn't linear anymore and mingyu isn't sure how it'll end. when it'll end. if it will at all.  
  
he doesn't know what he ever thought they'd become, but he never thought it would be this. it's got to mean something, he thinks, or it wouldn't be this easy to keep coming back. the simplicity of it feels surreal.  
  
how easily they pick up right where they left off.  
  
how soft the mattress is beneath them.  
  
how easily they sink.  
  
  
  
  
  
he can never tell if he's angry at himself after or not.  
  
he'll come home, back to his room, and he'll start to think too hard about it and he'll find that he is angry about something but it's a quick kind of anger. it burns out fast enough.  
  
(before he goes, each time, jihoon will hear mingyu's phone chime and he'll know. somehow he always knows. and jihoon will say: _just leave it, man_ , in his common sense way. his no-nonsense way. what he means is you know better.  
  
mingyu says, _i will_ , but he goes to the door anyway and this is a cycle that doesn't have much of an end.  
  
_leave it_ , jihoon says, and mingyu starts to lose the ability to even lie about it. he's too tired to lie about it. he's not going to _leave it_ , and they both know.)  
  
wonwoo calls and mingyu goes and then he comes back a few hours later, mad as hell that he went in the first place and frustrated that he didn't do anything differently this time and sick of himself. but he never once stops - he never once just leaves it.  
  
and so it is. nothing fixed. nothing pieced together or repaired or mended. and all it really leaves is two hurt people trying to see who can make the hurt worse on the other person.  
  
two wrongs don't make a right, mingyu knows this. he isn't sure whats worse in the long run - the way it was when they didn't talk or the way it is now because they still don't talk, not really. talking is the last thing they do. it's just a fucking mess, mingyu realizes, and after the anger passes and the denial drains away, all he's left with is the resignation of the way things are and a million questions about what he could do (or could've done) to stop it all from going so sideways. from getting so fucked up.  
  
there's too much history, he thinks - it's poisoning them. it's turning them into something terrible and toxic and something that feels heavier and heavier each time they come together and then fall apart.  
  
mingyu isn't sure why he (why they) can't just let it be - isn't sure why they're still bleeding over into one another, the way stains do.  
  
  
  
  
  
"do you ever think about the stranger's couches?" mingyu asks. "do you ever think about how many different places we slept?"  
  
admittedly, it's poorly timed. they're fucking, of course because this is now and that's all they really do. mingyu is mid-stroke when a question about couches falls from his brain into his mouth and then out, and beneath him, wonwoo's eyes flutter open. he looks confused for a moment, then annoyed.  
  
"what?" wonwoo snaps.  
  
"all the people we ever stayed with for a night, all those random people who knew someone who knew someone," mingyu explains, "do you ever think about all that?"  
  
"no," wonwoo says simply, factually, and mingyu can tell he's done talking about it. but still -  
  
"you really don't?" mingyu asks. "not ever?"  
  
wonwoo inhales deeply, closes his eyes again, says - _mingyu, shut the fuck up_.  
  
and mingyu wants to, he really does, but he's stuck on it for some reason. it's part of it, part of the big picture, part of the reason they're here now and he can't just stop thinking about it and he can't stop talking about it either so when he opens his mouth to speak again, wonwoo presses his palm over mingyu's lips. mingyu shoves his hand away, and then goes back to bracing one hand on the wall above the bed. the other hand, pressing firmly to the center of wonwoo's chest.  
  
he knows he should stop now, but the notion of knowing he should only spurns him on more and he leans in closer - pushes wonwoo's hair away from his forehead, away from his eyes and he wants to say something about all those times in all those different places, all those stranger's living rooms and dens late at night and early in the morning, where wonwoo let mingyu fuck him just like this, just like he's letting him now. he wants to, so he does ( _i know you think about it, i know you think about how you used to beg me for it_.) this time, wonwoo takes in a sharp, deep breath, and he wants to argue - mingyu can see that. so when wonwoo opens his mouth, mingyu hooks two fingers inside and wonwoo gags, closes his mouth around the digits and sucks.  
  
that's the end of that question for then, probably for forever, and mingyu knows he won't walk away from it with any satisfaction except the satisfaction of knowing that somehow he's managed to bury himself a bit further under wonwoo's skin.  
  
(and maybe it shouldn't feel this good, maybe mingyu hates himself a little for it, but something about it is better like this - with him pushing wonwoo into the mattress and when wonwoo comes, he'll do it with mingyu's fingers halfway down his throat and the pace unrelenting, unyielding. too hard. too much. because this is now, and it's the way they treat one another. there's no tenderness when they fuck now - no gentleness or care in the way it goes.  
  
it's now, and they're here, and mingyu thinks maybe he has to fuck wonwoo like he hates him because he doesn't know what else to do. because he loves him too much, and that's another fuck-up altogether.  
  
maybe this is what keeps him from saying the thing that could ruin it all, that could bring another year long silence or something deeper and longer and darker.  
  
maybe it has to be this way because maybe he loves wonwoo too much to let him go.)  
  
  
  
  
  
he thinks a lot about things he could've said.  
  
this usually happens at random times; when he's in the shower or when he's cooking dinner or when he's sat at his desk with a book open and for some reason he's not looking at  the book. he's staring at the light bulb in the lamp and he's imagining all the stuff that he didn't say when he left.  
  
things he didn't say that maybe would've made it easier. better.  
  
he thinks:  
  
_all i want is to be happy, and for you to be happy to. i'm tired and it's no one's fault but mine. i'm not walking away because i'm angry. we can talk about it. you can ask me questions. i don't want this, but that doesn't mean i don't want you. it's not you i'm leaving. please don't make me choose._  
  
he looks at the picture on his desk, the one of them all, stuck into the corner of the frame and mingyu wonders if anything at all could've changed what's happened between them, what's still happening now, what could happen tomorrow or the next day. his eyes are burning and he blinks fast - one, two, three times. he reaches out and turns the picture around. he looks away.  
  
there's something there, in the picture - a truth that's too imposing and too heavy for mingyu to think about or process. a revelation that's too big for him to take in. it was back then, and it doesn't matter now and even if it did, he thinks that they've both lost the courage to confront it so its better buried, pushed down. out of sight, out of mind.  
  
they all look so young in the picture. they look like different people (he thinks: _that's because we were_ ) and mingyu is smiling in the photo but the smile isn't real; his tongue is pressed against the back of his teeth. there's something else, though, the thing that is better left unsaid, the stone better left unturned -  
  
there. it's all in the eyes - wonwoo is looking at mingyu, looking up at him and there's the _something_ ; it's not adoration or infatuation, but it's something. the eyes don't lie. it looks a lot like love.

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like there's more to this - but we'll see if i still feel that way a month or two from now. purely self-indulgent drivel because i love boys in bands and pain. title taken from a song called cotton crush by kevin devine and the goddamn band. the soundtrack to this was a lot of trite mid-2000's emo shit that i love; brand new, taking back sunday, death cab for cutie, bright eyes and more. i hope you enjoyed it because tbh, i had fun writing it. if you wanna talk about the music or the fic or the feelings or the boys, hi. i'm usually around. find me on twitter @cliffparades.


End file.
